A variety of video compression/decompression methods and compression/decompression hardware/firmware modules and software modules (“codecs”), including the Moving Picture Experts Group (“MPEG”) MPEG-1, MPEG-2, and MPEG-4 video coding standards and the more recent H.263+ video coding standard, have been developed to encode pixel-based and frame-based video signals into compressed bit streams, by lossy compression techniques, for compact storage in electronic, magnetic, and optical storage media, including DVDs and computer files, as well as for efficient transmission via cable television, satellite television, and the Internet. The compressed bit stream can be subsequently accessed, or received, and decompressed by a decoder in order to generate a reasonably high-fidelity reconstruction of the original pixel-based and frame-based video signal.
Because many of the currently available video coding methods have been designed for broadcast and distribution of compressed bit streams to a variety of relatively inexpensive, low-powered consumer devices, the currently used video coding methods generally tend to divide the total computational complexity of the encoding-compression/decoding-decompression process so that encoding, generally carried out once or a very few times by video distributors and broadcasters, is computationally complex and expensive, while decoding, generally carried out on relatively inexpensive, low-powered consumer devices, is computationally simple and inexpensive. This asymmetrical division of computational complexity correctly places the computational burden on the broadcaster or distributor, who generally encodes a pixel-based and frame-based video signal only once, or a few number of times, prior to distributing the encoded video signal to a potentially huge number of consumers. Consumers can reconstruct high-fidelity video signals using relatively inexpensive consumer devices, such as satellite-TV boxes, DVD players, and video-decoding software applications, because the decoding process is relatively computationally inexpensive and simple. However, with the emergence of a variety of hand-held video-recording consumer devices, including video cameras, cell phones, and other such hand-held, portable devices, a need has arisen for video codecs that place a relatively small computational burden on the encoding/compression functionality within the hand-held video recording device, and a comparatively high computational burden on the decoding device, generally a high-powered server or other computationally well-endowed encoded-video-signal-receiving entity. This division of computational complexity is referred to as “reversed computational complexity.” Manufacturers, vendors, designers of, and users of portable, hand-held video-recording devices, codec designers, manufacturers, and vendors, and video-data-management providers have all recognized the need for new, efficient, and robust video codecs with reversed computational complexity.